If all works out, then I would be p***ed if I had purchased a Series 3 and paid Full price.

But I suppose if you had the Money to purchase a Series 3 in the first place, then you have nothing to complain about

I'll admit to a small amount of frustration, as it will have been a little less than a year between the $800 S3 and the supposedly $300 S3 Lite. OK, I probably wouldn't care at all if I had bought the S3 on day one. I got my at the end of December because our HD TiVo died and I didn't want to have to sign another contract to get DirecTV's new non-TiVo.

But really, I'm barely upset at all. The S3 has been good to me and for me.

I'll admit to a small amount of frustration, as it will have been a little less than a year between the $800 S3 and the supposedly $300 S3 Lite. OK, I probably wouldn't care at all if I had bought the S3 on day one. I got my at the end of December because our HD TiVo died and I didn't want to have to sign another contract to get DirecTV's new non-TiVo.

But really, I'm barely upset at all. The S3 has been good to me and for me.

I'm a little upset, since I bought mine last month. But that's life when it comes to CE. You can't stop progress.

I have one mcard in the correct slot on my Tivo (Comcast only had one card at the time and it took me 3 visits to get that). As of know it is only working with one tuner. Unless I'm doing something wrong, it appears that this feature has not been enabled yet. I'm hoping for it soon because I don't think I can stomach another round with Comcast.

FCC regulations state that Comcast must provide you any number of cablecards that you desire.

However, the S3 will treat any installed MCard as an SCard until all of the following occurs:

Cablelabs certifies the S3 as an MCard Host (this may have happened, but there is no proof).

The server that supports the cable lines for your neighborhood is updated to support MCards. Unless the cable company needed to distibute new MCard set top boxes in your neighborhood, there is nothing requiring them to upgrade.

Tivo downloads the MCard software update to Series 3's. No such announcement has been made.

I see no announcement from Cablelabs that ANY Tivo has achieved certification for M-Card operation (M-UDCP host certification). Nor, for that matter, Mcard Host certification for Any device from ANY company. That is more than a little bit surprizing given that the Cable industry promised we would have MCard support by this time last year. It's startling because you would have to have two $1400 OCUR cablecard readers to do what one S3 does, so the computer industry is a heck of a lot more motivated to get MCard Host certification complete, and yet I see no mention of their certifications for MCArd.

I wonder if devices could be certified and there be no Cablelabs announcement. I wonder if Moto and SciAtl boxes using MCards have to be certified. It seems to me that they definately would have to be using certified SCards and MCards in their new boxes after 7/1/2007 ban. But it also seems to me that it wouldn't be fair if the Cableco boxes only trivially used the Cablecards whereas third parties had to fully use them. The only way to verify this would be to require cablelabs certification for the cableco provided boxes as well.

Nor, for that matter, Mcard Host certification for Any device from ANY company. That is more than a little bit surprizing given that the Cable industry promised we would have MCard support by this time last year.

It'll only be surprising if we still don't have it in 2010. If the cable companies are only a year behind their "promise" with regards to multi-stream cable cards then that's par for the course.

Quote:

But it also seems to me that it wouldn't be fair if the Cableco boxes only trivially used the Cablecards whereas third parties had to fully use them. The only way to verify this would be to require cablelabs certification for the cableco provided boxes as well.

There hasn't been anything fair about the process to date, why should anything change now.

Nor, for that matter, Mcard Host certification for Any device from ANY company. That is more than a little bit surprizing given that the Cable industry promised we would have MCard support by this time last year.

Well there are cable companies already deploying the Moto DCH3416 to customers, so I have to presume there is an M-card in the back slot of those. In my local cable AVS forum I asked a poster to check the back of his DCH3416 but it looks like cable card slot in the back has a screwed in metal plate over it (probably to prevent tampering) so you can't see if there is a card in there or not unless it is removed (which he didn't want to do). Maybe it is possible to use the DCH without removable security (since it's backwards compatible with DCT) but that would seem to violate the spirit of the FCC regulation (and would seem pointless for cable companies to deploy as such).

Anyone who can't get the necessary cablecards from their cablecompany- the fastest way to resolve it is to call Tivo support. They have dealt with this before and know how to read the riot act to the local cable company. It's a pretty serious violation, and the local management may simply be ignorant that they are violating federal regulations.

(3) Cable operators shall ensure, as to all digital cable systems, an adequate supply of PODs that comply with the standards specified in paragraph (b)(2) of this section to ensure convenient access to such PODS by customers. (source)

Hey Ars Technica- have the decency to credit the specific person. Bkdtv scooped this. He came up with the model number, specs you quoted and the suggestion to google for the model number to find pictures/ confirmation from multiple retail sites.

Apparently Megazone discovered this way back on July 4th, but since he was under NDA, he decided it would be unethical to release info. He searched for Tivo HD on Froogle and it gave him a model number. Actually the hit is still there. Using the model number in Google gave him everything because amazon and everyone us has their copy up on the net on hidden pages that the google crawler found.

So I guess the new one should have even better tuners. It looks like a good deal. As long as the hard drive can be upgraded I can go without the OLED panel and get this for a 4th unit. If they have a lifetime transfer I might be able to get my girlfriend one to replace one of the Lifetime Series 2 single tuner units she has. I still have to finish convincing her to get an HD set. It took me 5 years to convince her to get a TiVo.(Actually accept the TiVos as a birthday present)

Unless the "lite" performs better than the original S-3 I really don't see the point of it.
Tivo makes their money on the service not such much on the units.

You're kidding, right? You are correct - Tivo makes the money on the service, not the hardware. But it's hard to sell service if you have hardware the masses can't afford. $799 MSRP was a much tougher sell than $299 MSRP.

For all practical purposes, the Series 2 line is at (or nearing) end of life. If the price point on the "S3 lite" box is as rumored, you can have HD/digital support for essentially the same price as analog. If TTG/MRV is added to the S3 s/w, then I don't really see an advantage of getting an S2 (yes, I know the S3lite will still be slightly more) if your TV signal is OTA or cable.

Seems like the series 3 was just an IPO of sorts, to raise money from the diehards, and gain another year of development on the real product.

And if the sales team hadn't so thoroughly screwed the initial sales (remember the "Lucky 200"?), Tivo could've made a lot more money on the initial S3 sales.

Remember - the S3 was the first box sold without a hardware subsidy. I suspect there will be a little h/w subsidy in the S3lite.

I was one of the early adopters and don't mind one bit that I bought an S3 with an "early adopter tax" (though I paid about $680 each for my two from a local retailer and price matching when Tivo couldn't take $799).

I raise my eyebrows a bit with the 160GB drive, though that's slightly better than the vast majority most of the existing cable DVRs in the field, and less of an issue if Tivo makes eSata plug and play like the Tivo wireless G (my Dad isn't ready for a Kickstart sequence, he can handle plugging in a cable and rebooting).

As Mega suggested, take the technical specs with a big grain of salt. The tuner listed- the Samsung S5H1411 purportedly gets 30% better reception in heavy multipath (city building reflections) situations, but the announcement for that chip was May 10, and as of Jun 28, the samsung site said it was still in a production status of "sample ready", not "mass production", as is the S5H1409- the 2005 model getting 30% worse reception.

So really- we can have fun guessing, but beyond what the screen dumps from Amazon said, don't assume too much. The folks that know what this beastie has got under the hood aren't talking, and the retail sites that did leak info were way too vague to specify anything interesting.

$300 is a great value for a HD TiVo. I hope this does become reality, as it'll get me to buy one. At that point I worry less about SDV and the off chance of the box becoming a doorstop in 3 years. I dont need the OLED screen, THX certification and eSATA (I'll just throw in a bigger HD every two years). Not having a TiVo on my HDTV is really starting to bother me. I might even get rid of my S2 box in my room (just because I need to stop laying in bed every night until midnight watching TV... I might just get rid of the TV too).

Yeah I was one of the early guys who paid $799 8 months ago, so I guess I'm p***ed.

I also bought a 57" 1080p DLP 18 months ago for $3200 and now it's $2000.

I also bought a Toshiba laptop 13 months ago for $1100, now it's $700.

I also bought a ...........oh forget it. I'm just p***ed!

I bought a 60" TV, TiVo S3 and HT System the week the S3 came out. I'd been hanging on until its release. All of it is much cheaper now, but I've had the enjoyment of it all this time. No regrets at all.

I bought a 60" TV, TiVo S3 and HT System the week the S3 came out. I'd been hanging on until its release. All of it is much cheaper now, but I've had the enjoyment of it all this time. No regrets at all.

That makes two of us. I actually bought the TV in late August on the rumors of "coming soon" and suffered through the cable company crap for about a month before Comcast could come and take it away and give me my cable cards, and that month just reinforced the fact that I made the right decision jumping when I did. I've had a great 10 months of HD and have been loving it!

__________________
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

It surprises me how many people are upset because a cheaper unit is coming out. This reminds me of the Parable of the Talents (I believe). Hey, if you thought the unit was worth what you paid for it, why bregrudge someone else getting a better deal. I bought the S3 last November and I have no regrets. I bought my PS3 2 months ago and now Sony is lowering the price. That's life. I'm happy to see the price go down so more people can enjoy these products (not that there is much to enjoy on the PS3 right now however! ).

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If the two were the same except for HD space, you'd think the part number would 2080 instead of 3080. So something else could be different.

Maybe the 3080 is not a DVR as such, but something you would use as a regular set top box and as a receiver for MRV. It would only need a small HD (80 GB) to store the OS and to act as a buffer for the show being streamed. Maybe single-tuner HD only with one CableCard. No need for eSATA. Just a simple box to plug into your bedroom TV.

So you'd buy one big Tivo, and a bunch of mini-Tivos. This is how Verizon does MRV -- the regular HD set top boxes can stream directly from the main DVR.

New S3L will be $299.
For +$100 I get... 1) +90 gb of storage (250 vs 160 on S3L), 2) a better remote, 3) THX cert. and 4) OLED Display, 5) a nicer case + 6) eSata port - will the S3L have this or not?

Works for me that seems to be worth $100 IMO. No complaints here. Plus I get to use my S3 now rather than wait for the S3L release.